Fray
by Genevievie
Summary: The Reaper War ended without reunion between Shepard and Garrus, without any goodbyes. Now, years later, someone calls Garrus back to her side. A series of vignettes that explores their post-war lives apart.
1. Chapter 1

The girl accompanied evening into Garrus' office. Soft as the moon, she spilled into the room with the wispiness of waning energy, lit up by the burning fluorescence behind her. He waited for a blue-dressed guard to follower her inside, or even just to salute him from behind her and carry on with their duty, but she was alone.

Something pulsed red in the corner of his vision. It made his nerves tense, his muscles stiffen. With it came an itch that tightened his trigger finger into a C-shape until it had folded into itself, becoming square and safe. His other fingers followed suit until his hand clenched into a useless fist. The girl was not a threat; the red was her heartbeat. The red was something like fear.

What occurred to him next wasn't the frailness of her body, or the darkness of her hair, or the lines that etched too deep into a face as young as hers. It was that she was someone important, or knew something important. The building where he worked was more of an enclave than a neatly stacked arrangement of offices. Security was notoriously tight – so much so that people joked that if a leaf were to blow in from outside, it would have to pass five levels of clearance before it could be swept back out. On a normal day, this girl wouldn't have made it past the driveway without five snipers staring her down through crosshairs. But there she was, alive with a beating heart, so he had to at least humour her.

"Hey. You Garrus?" she said as soon as the door whooshed shut.

"For about another ten minutes. After that I'm off for the day."

"Not that you asked, but I'm Lisa. I can work with ten minutes."

"Right."

"I don't know if they told you about me."

"They?"

"They. The people I talked to? The council? Looks like that's a _no_ though."

"It's a no," he said, his words slowed. There was nothing simple about the council. At times, Garrus would rather wrestle a thresher maw armed only with his own adrenaline than deal with the tightened shoulders, short words, and blind ideologies of the galaxy's chosen ones. That they gave this girl an audience worked its way beneath his skin, though he couldn't pinpoint precisely why. Maybe because they had neglected to warn him to expect company. Maybe because it usually took him a month to get either a _yes_ or a _no_ out of them and he worked for the assholes. Or maybe the source of his irritation was Lisa herself, who was moving through the room like she was unsure how to exist within its walls. Lisa and her purpose, and the cold dread that settled on him as he wondered exactly how much more she was going to cost him than the promise of a quiet evening alone.

When she reached his desk she pulled a datapad from inside the folds of her jacket and crossed her arms over chest, tucking the pad behind her elbow. "So there's this woman," she said. "On Omega – that's where I'm from. Calls herself Jo. Won't give us anything else to know her by. Just that. Jo."

"Makes sense," he said. "Most people go to Omega to disappear. Names just complicate that."

"Yeah, right, exactly. She showed up right around the end of the war, you know, like a lot of people. Nobody asks why – the stories are never good. Anyway, somehow she found us."

"Us?"

Lisa looked away, wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. "Street rats. Urchins. Piss. Don't know what your kind calls us these days."

"To be honest, it doesn't come up much," Garrus said.

If that bothered Lisa, it didn't show; she rolled it off her shoulders with a shrug and said, "Don't know if that's better or worse."

"There probably aren't many good options out there."

"Nah."

"So...?"

"Right. So one of the kids got himself killed. Real bad. Jo … I don't know. It messed her up."

There was a throb in Garrus' head, right behind his brow. Grief counselling wasn't something he believed he could manage, even if he'd had to work a sense of calm into more broken people than he wanted to think about. And he wasn't an assassin – or a Spectre. There were better people to go to for reassurance or revenge; people with more experience, more surety, more to gain, less to lose. All he had was heart, and really, where had that landed him? In a small office on the Citadel. Sharing his evening with a girl he didn't know and a project he knew he didn't want to undertake.

"Can you get to the point, kid?"

"Yeah, sure. We tried to talk to her but she played it like there was nothing wrong. Or – of course there was something wrong, she didn't just lie about that, we're not fools and she knows it, but she wouldn't talk to us, even to say she was having a hard time. So I got to thinking that maybe someone from whatever life she had before might be able to, I don't know, do something. Anything. And I found a person who knew a person who could get me in with Aria. I figured she could help me figure out who Jo was since she's got all those people working for her. Turns out she already knew her."

"So who was she?"

"I don't know. Aria wouldn't tell me. Nobody would. But she said you'd know." A crooked, awkward sort of smile played at the corner of her lips and she unfolded her arms to offer Garrus the datapad. "I've got some pictures. Everyone told me to keep them classified, I think it pissed off the guards but whatever," she said, with the nervousness of a child offering a present to a distant father. "You can just look at them though, it's cool."

Garrus took it from her, flipped through its album. At first without trepidation. Then with the slowness brought upon him by a pair of useless hands that refused to stay still, their nerves scorched by a flame of red hair.

There she was, surrounded by children, playing hopscotch on a pattern of water lines; there she was again, exchanging presents beneath neon lights. Again, curled up asleep with a toddler. Again, photobombing two smiling boys. Again, letting a group of batarian children do her hair. And again, and again, and again.

Lisa didn't have a way to sense his heart rate. She couldn't read the nuances of his thoughts as his mind slowly curled up on itself, and she couldn't accurately measure the gravity settling on him with the weight of seven years of loss. Taking a step closer she said, needily, "Will you help?"

Guilt and anger and relief boiled behind his eyes. Those photos weren't for him to look through; that woman wasn't for him to see again. Yet there she was in the palm of his hands, and here Lisa was, standing in front of Garrus, telling him otherwise.

Where was he though? He didn't have a damned clue. He wanted to yell at Lisa until she left, and he wanted to pull her into his arms until he cried and keep her there until he stopped. He wanted to refuse her request. To tell her that the right to that woman's company had been stripped from him in a manner that made it unconditionally final. But the woman in the photos was her and he was himself, and only together were they Shepard and Vakarian, so he wanted to say yes, too.

For the longest time he said nothing. Lisa said nothing. Or maybe she did. The Citadel could have collapsed around him for all he knew, for all he cared, for all he could consider without his mind snapping like a twig beneath all this new growth of thought.

Would he help? Could he help?

Did he want to help?

Shit, he didn't know.

"Get back to me on this tomorrow," was all he could manage.


	2. Chapter 2

There was no reasoning through the logic of the streets occupying Omega's underbelly like a mass of knotted intestines. Bridges were blown out. Entire intersections were built over with barricades; manned ones came with tolls of varying natures. Usually credits. Sometimes drugs. Sometimes blood – lives. Then there were the broken roads, run-down and polluted by so many pieces of Omega's fractured infrastructure that crossing them was an arduous exercise in evading hazards. None of which was accounted for on any of the maps Shepard had pulled up on her omni-tool, each one failing in its own way to reorient old lines with new lives.

Aria had offered her an escort which she refused. Retrospect was making that a pretty shitty decision, but Shepard's anonymity was more valuable to her than the ability to travel from Point A to Point B with minimal frustration. There wasn't much else for her to conceal herself with than the pretense of being nobody. Scars had carved her face into a morbid misrepresentation of how she was meant to look but she was far from unrecognisable. Though she walked stooped over, limping, shuffling, she carried herself with the discipline and pride of a soldier. There was no altering her voice, no rewriting her DNA, strand by strand, until it was tricked into believing she was somebody else. All she really had to protect her identity with was indifference; the thought that the underbelly's population might care less about the new woman, about Commander Shepard, and about the Reaper War than they did about their next hit, next kill, next break into something better.

Another part of her craved Omega's isolation, and the freedom within it to disconnect from the past ten years of her life. Accepting Aria's help would have had an opposing effect, tethering her instead of granting her release. Feeding that craving, however, was proving as difficult as navigating her way. The commander still persisted within her and she was nothing if not determined.

Then there was this issue: she hadn't been alone for at least half a mile, though not by choice.

The girl tailing her was around a couple years older than Shepard was when she started surviving by making a living in the bad parts of town. So seven, maybe. Eight. Too young to be on the streets, too old to be walking them with all the stealth of an elephant grazing in open plains of snow. Children like her weren't born into that life, she knew; they came from better places, either boxed up and chained as part of a package deal or brought along by someone incapable of taking care of them. Stranded, they had to figure out their place. So they studied people. Followed them around. Learned the difference between an easy mark and someone capable of slitting their throats, then learned how to take advantage of both types.

Shepard gave her another month to survive. Possibly a little longer. Though she could never be certain. Maybe the girl was being monitored. Maybe she was better at living in the slums than she was letting on; maybe she was armed; maybe she was a biotic; maybe she was vicious; maybe she was a trap.

Even as a civilian, Shepard supposed, a soldier doesn't stop thinking like a soldier. Childhood behaviours on the other hand were far more easily lost. No part of her mind rose to the cause of thinking like a street child; neither could she sift through the red sand hazed over her past to find a frame of reference for how somebody might reach out to one. It took enlisting in the military for her to settle into accepting outside help, and that only happened after spending her first year resentful that her new existence simply ran parallel to the last.

From the distance came the loud rumble of explosives erasing more lines on the map. A cloud of smoke rose high over a tenement, the ramshackle roof of which had just started to emerge from behind the other buildings in Shepard's way. She had no intent of continuing into a war zone, and she didn't see much point to progressing forward when she was so unsure of where, precisely, forward was. Since there was no going backwards either, she figured she could stop moving for a small moment. Take a breather, rest her aching leg, gauge her shadow's next move. Not many people were around anymore. Those who were seemed too out of it to care about someone standing in the almost-open, lost. It was safe to stop. Or as safe is it would be.

The resting spot she chose was near what once was a pub, judging by the displaced sign laid flat on the ground. Now it was a hazard of charred frames and shattered glass that radiated outward from a large scorch mark on the sidewalk. To her left, the girl skittered behind the skeletal remains of a taxi and perched in a way that kept her in Shepard's line of vision; if she tilted her head at just the right angle, she could see her fingers and knees from beneath the car.

It only took a moment for her body to assert the depth of its exhaustion. The prospect of walking another who-knows-how-far infected her muscles with heavy lethargy, and the pain that once kept to her leg had begun to spread to her feet and her back and the space right between her eyes, where it rapidly throbbed.

Somehow it seemed that the further she ventured into Omega, the warmer nostalgia swelled around her heart. Now it worked at sweating away her surety, flooding her with memories. Of a haphazard clinic and a doctor who healed with one hand and killed with the other; of the Archangel who had spread his protective wings across the darkness as best he could; of an asari queen and a loyal turian; of a grateful batarian and a hapless young man who wanted to breathe hope into the dying. Each one flitting through her mind like butterflies coasting a sea of flowers. No matter how many times she tried to blur them into the darkest corners of her memory where no light would reflect off them, they tickled at her thoughts until they occupied them every bit as much as the forsaken streets she failed to understand.

Maybe, she thought, stopping wasn't such a great idea. She wasn't deep enough for doubt, not yet.

There remained the matter of the little girl though, so she tried to think about her instead. In the time Shepard had spent futilely tucking her thoughts into the places they belonged, she had moved enough that a tuft of her black hair now poked out from beside the bumper. Careful not to make it obvious she was watching her, Shepard turned her omni-tool back on, pulled up another map of Omega, and repositioned herself so she could keep an eye on the girl while maintaining a pretense of busyness. Gradually, in short spurts of confidence, more of the child appeared from behind he car until she wasn't bothering to hide at all anymore.

Still Shepard pretended not to notice, keeping her eyes trained on the omni-tool while her focus kept sideways watch of the girl, who was now making a cautious approach.

"What's your name?" she asked when she was close enough to speak quietly but clearly.

"Jo," Shepard said, disconnecting her omni-tool with a flick of her wrist.

The girl watched, rapt, then said: "Jo what?"

"Just Jo. What's your name?"

"Oh. I'm Lisa. Hi."

"Hey there."

Two types of power existed on the street, and the good kind – the nurturing kind, the innocent kind – never lasted very long. There was a fine line between being a little girl and being a hoodlum, and in places like Omega, gusts of fate always toyed at pushing the purest parts of a person over the edge. It was good, she thought, to see that she was still mostly a child.

Not entirely though, at least not in the right way. Now that she could see her more closely, she noticed just how skittish she looked, how unsure. Trembles overtook her body in small waves, and everything about her clenched as if she was trying to make herself compact. Something else was bothering her, too; her focus had shifted from Shepard to the building behind her, and she kept her eyes keen on what remained of the door, her head tilted as if she was trying to hear something amidst the long-settled rubble inside.

"You shouldn't stand there, you know," she eventually said in a voice that was quieter still yet bore an urgency that hadn't existed earlier.

"And why's that?"

"That's where the bad people work."

"Do you know these bad people?"

"Not really. Just... they wear purple and they like to shoot things. A lot."

"I guess it was only a matter of time before someone claimed purple..."

"What?"

Shepard shook her head and made a mental note to mind her words. It was too easy to slip pieces of her past into her present, too easy to open herself up to explaining things she didn't want to talk about. "It's not important," she said, then added, after a short pause: "Do you mind if I ask you something else, Lisa?"

"Okay."

"If you know that this is where the bad people are then why'd you come here?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No, I don't."

"I probably should've expected that, huh? Seems to be a running theme."

"Yeah. Um."

"Um...?"

"You asked me, so … can you tell me why you're here, too?"

"Sure. I'm trying to find a place."

"Oh. What place?"

"The 45th SE apartment block. You wouldn't happen to know where it is, would you?"

A smile flickered a little light across Lisa's face. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth as if to restrain her hope, to keep it from blinding her, but all that did was make her look silly, which made Shepard laugh, which must have filled Lisa with a little bit more confidence because she reached forward and took Shepard's hand in her own.

"Come on," she said, a little louder now, a little less shaken. "It's this way."

As they walked away together, the only thing Shepard could think was that she had been right earlier. That girl wouldn't have lasted much longer out there on her own.


	3. Chapter 3

Humans had a saying: _you can't go home again_. The closest thing turians had to it was _you return for duty_, which essentially meant that all those little things that made a home a home were irrelevant behind the call of obligation.

Shepard often said her version whenever Garrus spoke about reclaiming some of his past in the future. She'd smile at him, never meaning to be discouraging, but it wasn't enough to clear the air of her cynicism. Usually Garrus would just push the conversation towards something else – something that didn't venture into her history, even tangentially, because she didn't share it with anybody. It never bothered him much; quietly, he found it to be a good way of looking at things. Even if the melancholy was a little thicker than he liked, the sentiment struck a chord with him. Made him think about taking fewer things for granted.

Not Shepard though. Never Shepard. At the very least he could say he appreciated every moment by her side.

In recent years, he hadn't given either saying much consideration. Work on the Citadel consumed any lingering thoughts of Palaven with its voracious appetite for Garrus' time, and he didn't often give into homeward longing even when he had could afford the introspection. Secure in his own survival, he'd learned to keep regular contact with his loved ones now that each word he exchanged with them no longer felt like a different way of saying goodbye, so the loneliness of being placeless didn't burrow so deep inside of him anymore.

Today was different. It was nostalgic and it was lonely; it was driven by duty and by a need for one piece of his past to remain unchanged. In his mind, he exchanged smiles with an unmarred Shepard who hadn't aged a day since he last saw her – who had, in fact, grown younger now that she wasn't trying to carry the galaxy in the palms of her hands. There was laughter, there was love. He thought of standing there, seeing her, and thinking _you are mine_.

Or was his.

_This is just another mission_, he repeated in his mind until he stopped regarding Shepard with the fondness of a lover. _You return for duty._

That wasn't entirely true either.

He had never considered Omega home. It fought too hard against him, etched the names of too many ghosts into his bones. Yet he also felt something not unlike fondness towards the place. Deep in its streets he had found ways to nurse the wounds he sustained after losing Shepard over Alchera. He was reminded of the pureness of camaraderie, given his first taste of instigating positive change, taught the true depth of his strength.

Nothing remained of his efforts; they'd all been washed away by the sea of blood that broke through the dam he'd built. Aria had brought it to his attention using whatever information she could scrounge up from the chaos beneath her. He wasn't sure if she'd wanted him to do something about it or not – really, he didn't think it mattered overly much to her as long as she held her throne – so he absolved himself of taking renewed action, even though he craved the taste of purpose, even though he could feel blood caked beneath his talons everyday thereafter and knew that there was only one way to wash it away.

He picked at his hands, wrung them together until they hurt.

Duty to the Citadel was what brought him back the other times he'd returned. Always to speak with Aria under the pretense of diplomacy. The council reasoned that Garrus knew her and therefore would have better luck propagandising in their favour, but it was because of their acquaintanceship that he put forth minimum effort towards a series of _you rub my back, I'll rub yours_ compromises, wherein the council was told the best version of Omega's story and Garrus found brief respite from the bureaucracy. On those occasions he just made the quick journey from the docks to Afterlife and was done before his shuttle finished restocking.

The intercom buzzed above him. "We've got an ETA of ten minutes sir," came the pilot's young voice, discomfortingly clear. Garrus straightened his back, willed the nuanced sadness away from his face until he'd affected the sternness of a proper turian.

His mind was more difficult to harden. Anticipation didn't give a damn about his preference for neutrality; it played his heart like a cymbal and he could feel its reverberations down to his feet. He started to think through how everything might unfold. His arrival, her realization that he was there for her, their conversations – plural, because nobody should ever have to fit so many years of separation into a single exchange. Then he got to thinking about the feel of her hair between his fingers; the smell of her skin, like sweat, like soap, like metal, like musk. The curve of her smile, the weight of her body pressed against his. Her tongue, her breasts, her legs tightened around him. Her everything, all at once.

Funny, he thought. Over the years he'd gotten over her, moved on. Found love and lost love in ways that were differently cruel. And now?

Fuck, how he missed her now.

Before, he had accepted that she was gone, that he would never see her again; he had packed her into an oblong hexagonal box in his mind and kept her there. Painful but simple; a combination he knew well enough to find reliable in a twisted sort of way.

Now his thoughts refused to remain like the soldiers he'd made of them, neatly aligned and loyal to his sanity, firing only on his command. First with: _what if all of this is just an elaborate trap_? Then: _this is borderline disrespectful_. Then: _she hasn't reached out to you for a reason, jackass_. Then, predominantly: _what if seeing me makes things worse for her_? And after that: _shit, was I always this full of myself_? Garrus pushed his shoulders back into the cushioned seat, spread his legs, felt his face soften into something less put-together. The tech around him hummed. It was infuriatingly soothing.

Rationally, he could also draw parallels between them. He hadn't gone back to Palaven like they'd discussed. Having to abandon her during the final rush against the Reapers shook something inside of him, made him question himself, weakened him as a soldier. He had regressed. Maybe she had, too.

That wasn't the right thought either; it pricked at his stomach, made him feel like he was denying Shepard the infinite credits of strength she'd earned in his presence.

He rolled his head to the side. Omega was inching into the window, large and looming, suddenly ominous in its nearness. Now that he was so close to revolving at the same speed as Shepard, to breathing in the same filthy air, it occurred to him that maybe they'd just become each other. Garrus tying himself down so tight to a cause that sometimes it suffocated him; Shepard doing whatever she had to do to piece her fragmented self into a more viable whole.

The pilot piped in with a simple "Prepare for landing, sir," and Garrus exhaled as much of his doubt as he could. He stood up. Made sure that his pack was in reach, double checked his weapons, straightened out his armour, confirmed that he had more than enough ammo should he be caught in a firefight.

Though he was uncertain what he would do – what he could do – beneath the red lights of Omega, it was time for him to pretend to be sure about moving forward. Even if he could taste his lunch at the back of his throat; even if he could feel his heartbeat in the tips of his fingers. There was no turning back. He'd never be able to face himself again if he did.

Maybe, he told himself, as his foot touched ground, it would all turn out okay.

Or maybe it was all about to go to hell.


	4. Chapter 4

Two weeks after the end of the Reaper War, in a small white room, Shepard woke up to find Hackett standing at the foot of her bed. His arms were tight behind his back, his shoulders firm and square, but she could only see him through a haze that made the carefully set lines of his body seem soft and ethereal.

She felt disconnected, like part of her was caught in Zero-G while the rest of her had become one with the unmoving ground. _It's polite to sit up for company_, she thought, but her body was still weak, still tired, still heavy with drugs and no matter how determined she was to get up, it was disinclined towards being moved. Maybe if she closed her eyes the loss of her sight would transfer strength to her muscles – but no, all that did was blind her to the source of the weight on her shoulder, pushing her back down. Whatever it was, it smelled of cardamom and wood and she wished that she could close her airways as easily as her eyes because it was reminding her that she had a headache, the thickness of which was challenging her desire to be a proper host.

_Oh, screw it._

Giving in to the pressure, she sunk back into the comfort of her bed. They'd given her extra pillows, the nurses. Maybe a mattress pad. Everything beneath her was soft. She contemplated falling back asleep but the weight lifting from her shoulder reminded her of her company, and she opened her eyes to see Hackett standing beside her now, one arm left behind his back, the other returning to his his side.

"Sir?" she asked, her voice so dry she could barely recognize the sound it made. "What are you doing here?"

"They told me you were awake."

"I think they were being generous," she said, then added, "No, wait, I guess I am. Awake."

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

Forcing a passable smile, she said: "Been better. Been worse too."

To which Hackett nodded and responded with: "It's good to have you back with us either way."

Kind words, but unsettling. Meant to stall.

Shepard frowned – cringed, really.

When she first woke, the doctors had told her bits and pieces of the postwar story. Mostly the good parts. The defeat of the Reapers, the survival of earth, the safety of the Citadel. Beyond that, they couldn't give her what she wanted: facts, figures. There was no saying how many people had survived, or how many had been lost, or whether any other planets or colonies had fallen in the time it took her to reach the Crucible, shift through two piles of self-important bullshit, and step into the light she thought would take her life.

Information, she learned, had become a limited commodity. It came at a premium bought by status that only the four large racial governments – asari, salarian, turian, human – could afford. They alone had access to all the available details, few as they were. Everyone else just scavenged what they could here and there.

"Does my crew know I'm here?" she had asked.

"Nobody but top brass knows," they'd said. "To everyone else, you're MIA."

They told her it was a matter of security. The Alliance wanted to keep her somewhere quieter, where casualties were fewer than on earth and where she could be kept outside the reach of ardent supporters, and fanatics, and the media, which is why she was being treated in a small medical centre on the Citadel and not somewhere with a larger Alliance presence. When she asked why her crew hadn't been told, they couldn't give her a solid answer. Nobody really knew where anybody was anymore.

Except Hackett. Serving at the heart of the battle for earth, he'd had sensors on the pulse of every ship stationed in the Sol system.

Including the Normandy.

Especially the Normandy.

Shepard's heart sank, rose to her throat, sped up as though time had quickened for it even as it slowed for her.

Hackett remained silent. Stalling now by waiting for her to speak.

"Just tell me what you came here to tell me," she said.

"We can't find the Normandy."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Commander, I know it's not the news you wanted to hear."

A goddamned understatement.

Time lurched forward. Too fast. She tried to look away from the faces filling her mind like a mosaic of torn photographs. Watched Hackett watching her. He was solid, unwavering. The lines in his face were deeper than she remembered. He looked thinner too; maybe that was why age had managed to creep up on him so quickly. Death favoured the skeletal.

She wondered how bad her crew looked.

But that hurt too much to think about, so she left the thought of deep lines – both wrinkled and etched into flesh and muscle and bone by something sharp – behind her.

It didn't help much.

She was afraid of what he had to say next. That they'd given up hope, maybe. That they had reason to believe the Normandy didn't survive. That they'd confirmed the other members of her crew – the ones grounded on Earth – had died before she could stop the Reapers.

"She made a bad jump," Hackett continued. Shepard rolled her head towards him, the best she could do to show him she was still listening. "We were able to track her for a few minutes before she went black. There's no saying now which system she's in, never mind zeroing in on her specific location or determining the status of her crew."

"What's being done to find them?"

"We started using probes ten days ago, within the next week we hope to launch more satellite receivers in all systems within reach. It's our belief that they'll assist us in picking up on compromised or personal communications signals and detecting any beacons or black boxes broadcasting from remote locations."

"How many ships have you sent out?"

"None."

Shepard felt sick.

She wished she hadn't asked.

The word felt foreign on her tongue as she repeated it: "None."

No ships.

No rescue.

Being stranded nowhere for two weeks takes its toll, and unless everybody had agreed to minimal rations on day one she knew they'd be running low on food soon. If they weren't almost out already. Meanwhile, she had an extra pillow. Drugs to keep the pain at bay. No food yet, but enough nutrients in lieu of it that it didn't really matter. While she grew increasingly alive, they became less so. Assuming they hadn't already succumbed to whatever turned the Normandy black.

_Stop_.

With slightly greater strength than before, she pulled herself up into a seated position. Yanked one of the pillows out from behind her back and placed it on the walker beside her bed, the one she was supposed to use to move around but never did.

Ever the soldier, or the sentinel, Hackett remained stiff and stern.

"Why the hell isn't anybody out there looking for them?"

"We don't have the resources to launch search and rescue missions beyond locations we already know require assistance. We want to find them, Commander, but we have to be reasonable."

"Those people gave everything to win this war. All they had. Are you telling me you're going to thank them by abandoning them?"

"We're going to honour them by refusing to waste their efforts and moving forward."

What a manipulative thing to say, she thought. But also a very military thing. Sometimes a soldier just had to grab the aorta and squeeze, hard, until a person couldn't refuse to fall in line else they broke their own heart. Goodness knows she was guilty of the same. More times than she cared to admit.

There was no battlefield on the Citadel though; no lives were on the lines within its walls. The only thing Hackett could be motivating her towards was complacency – the same kind of acceptance the council tried to knead into her each time she raised concerns over the Reapers. Saying _it's nothing, Shepard_, when it was something.

When it was everything.

"What about the others?" she spat out like her words were bile.

"What others do you mean?"

"I had people serving with me on earth. Old crew. Where are they?"

"I have know way of knowing that. If you send my office a list of names, photographs, and other identifying details I'll have them confirm their status for you. I can't promise you anything however, Commander; there are a lot of missing people down there."

Her chest hurt. She breathed in, out, in again; it didn't help.

She wanted him gone. To go back to being far away from Hackett, and his proud posture, and his unwavering militarism, and the glory in his eyes, and the scar across his face that went deeper than his flesh. So she added, "Is that everything, sir?"

"No. There's been some pressure to change your designation, a lot of powerful people are arguing that the galaxy needs some good news. I'm inclined to agree with them."

"Tell them to wait until the Normandy's found," she said.

Hackett opened his mouth.

Then he closed it. Nodded and said, "I'll inform them of your position, but understand that I can only do so much."

"Understood."

"Then I'll be taking my leave. Don't let those injuries keep you down, Commander," he said.

"Goodbye, sir," she said. No salute. Hackett's face seemed to twitch with an inkling of something resembling anger but he let it slide, turned on his heel, made his way away from her until he disappeared behind the door.

In his absence, the room filled with so much darkness that the pressure of her uselessness shattered Shepard into a million fragments. Too numb to feel it happen, she slid back down in her bed, rolled over, closed her eyes, and wondered how long it would take to fall back asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Garrus felt empty.

Entirely, oppressively empty.

It all started with the words, "_I regret to inform you..._"

He would never know how Hackett had packaged the confirmation of Shepard's death – would only ever be able to bring to mind the general sound of his voice burying her beneath the gravel of its tone. All the things he should be sensing, or feeling, or doing just sort of bounced against the perimeter of his heart, caught in their own little pocket of his psyche, too deep down for him to reach.

Tali and Liara and Joker and Kaidan, along with most everybody else on the Normandy, carried within them a heartsickness he could feel in the air. Because he couldn't breathe beneath it, he kept to himself. Worked when Chakwas would let him, rested when she decided his body had taken enough strain, ate when he started growing dizzy from the hunger he didn't really feel either.

Alone at night, he would sit in the silence of a dead ship and force himself to push forward towards reuniting with his sister and his father, neither of whom had disobeyed him by dying.

* * *

The Normandy was still grounded a week later. Alliance vessels couldn't reach the system in which they'd been stranded, so they could only assist them through news updates and sessions with grief counsellors, none of whom Garrus opted to see. Only the salarians were in a position to make it before supplies ran out, though even they were pushing the limits. The course was longer than any of their available ships had travelled, which resulted in a lot of maintenance and refuelling along the way, and an uncomfortable lengthening of their ETA from five days to _hopefully no more than ten_.

Garrus spent most of his time in the gunnery, where nothing worked because it had all been dismantled and repurposed elsewhere. Someone – Garrus couldn't remember who, some Alliance soldier he'd only met in passing – commented on how it felt like they were taking their first step towards peace, but all he could think was how naïve she was being. It was impossible for him to feel right knowing that the ship was no longer armed. Though there were other places the crew could have used him – the plumbing, the shields, the piloting systems which were still bucking against Joker's decreasingly patient commands – he diligently cobbled together cannons and code, telling himself with each glitch and every backfire that the Normandy needed him to do that work and only that work.

Nobody bothered him much. They'd tried for a while to get him to talk but after a few days most people just left him to his own devices, which was fine by him.

Today, Kaidan seemed intent on being an exception to that.

He'd been standing at the door for at least a couple minutes. Shepard used to do something similar. Leaning against the frame, she'd watch him work, waiting for his visor to pick up on her presence, mentally timing him to see how long it took him to give in and acknowledge her. It was one of her favourite games because it was one he could never win; soon after it began, he would stop focusing on work and start thinking about the feel of her body beneath his as he pressed her hard against the wall, and then he was doomed.

Obviously, Kaidan wasn't Shepard. Neither was he Garrus; the man's patience was potentially infinite under sensitive circumstances, which these were.

The game was already lost.

He put down his tools, rose to his feet, and turned to face the door.

As soon as he did, Kaidan asked: "Do you have a moment?"

Garrus shrugged in that nonchalant way of his and said, "Sure, what do you need?"

There was a ceremonial stride to Kaidan's step as he moved through the room. Garrus didn't care for the way it separated them – the way it made it seem as though they hadn't been on equal footing just a few minutes earlier. Tucked beneath his arm was something small and thin that had been wrapped in what looked like an Alliance flag, if Garrus was remembering earth the right way.

Now within an arm's reach, Kaidan stopped and held the item out to Garrus with the same military pomp he'd seen human soldiers display at funerals for those lost on the battlefield.

_So that's what this is about_, he thought.

Reluctantly, Garrus reached out to receive the package.

"Whose idea was this?" he asked.

"It was mine," Kaidan said. "It didn't feel right launching the Normandy again without taking the time to honour the people we lost."

"When?"

"Pardon me?"

"When are you holding the ceremony?"

"I was thinking tomorrow night. ETA on the salarian ship was two days when they checked in earlier this morning, so it'll give all of us the opportunity to figure out how to say our goodbyes while leaving us with enough time left over to run a few tests the next day."

"You want me to give a speech?"

"I'd like the option to be there for anyone who wants to take it, yeah. It's not mandatory though. I think everyone here understands that not everybody has something to say at times like this."

Garrus rolled the plaque in his hands, considered its weight. It felt unbearably light. It should have been heavy, he thought. It should have been hard to hold. It should have manifested the immenseness of losing Shepard. Instead it was just there, every bit as weightless as his mind.

"Fine."

"I should go check on Tali," Kaidan said. "She hasn't been taking this well, Shepard meant a lot to her."

"Right," Garrus said. He turned around, listened for Kaidan to leave.

The moment the door closed behind him, he placed the memorial plaque – still wrapped in its flag – on one of the dead terminals and went back to work.

* * *

The nameplate bore the wrong name. _Commander Shepard_. Not Jane. Like she was definable by her leadership more than the rest of her; more than her kindness and her wit, more than her determination, more than her humanity.

A figure.

A figment.

Somebody too important for such a simple-sounding name as Jane Shepard.

This was the first step in history's fictionalisation of her story, Garrus knew. Glory would come before the genuine and sensationalism would rise high above the subtleties that made her more than a leader, more than a soldier, more than a heroic tragedy.

What would the universe miss learning, he wondered. The strength of her kindness, the softness of her voice? The compassion that drove her sometimes to the brink of madness and that other times drew people to her, made them latch onto her every action? The gentleness of her touch, the way her laugh rang until it chimed through the room?

And what would he lose to all the noise made by the media, by the politician, by the tabloids? The lightness of her body as she leaned against him and trembled the fear, the adrenaline, the kiss of death out of her system? That impish grin of hers, the one that parted her lips enough to show that she was biting the tip of her tongue?

He wasn't ready for his love to become their legend.

And yet there he was, about to put the first piece of her remastering into place.

Something shifted in the air around him, in his mind, in his heart, in his spirit. Weight settled at last on the plaque. It felt more substantial in his hands. Real in ways it hadn't been before.

Behind him, he could hear the gathered crew breathe. Nobody spoke. Not even a whisper. If he listened carefully, he thought that he could pick up on the sound of their hearts beating. Or maybe it was just his own.

He took a moment for himself. Inhaled, closed his eyes, exhaled, and let the haunting loneliness finally overtake his numbness. Like pins and needles after a period of bloodlessness, it hurt in ways that made it hard for him to think of anything, least of all finalising Shepard's death in as swift an action as sliding a strip of metal into its eternal resting spot.

The monument had been recently polished. Garrus could see the streaks in its shine, could smell the sickly perfumed scent of whatever they'd used hanging in the air. Above Shepard's space, Anderson's plaque caught a bit of light which made it sparkle in places like a faraway starfield, and he wondered if Shepard got to see the universe stretch vast in front of her at least one last time before she died.

He hoped she did, and that it was made all the more beautiful by the knowledge of her victory.

Sliding the plaque into is proper place, he tried his best to position it so it was perfectly centred. The hush deepened behind him. A final moment of solidarity with their commander; as she doesn't breathe, they don't breathe.

Fourteen tiny flecks of light had settled around Shepard's name. Garrus counted them thrice. It felt like too few. She deserved more. Of everything. More stars, more days, more smiles, more love.

More life.

It hurt him to turn away but he did. Together with the crew he stood in silence. Reflecting, honouring, mourning. Reasoning their own survival into the equation of fairness that claimed Shepard's life, doing their best to be as soldiers – strong and firm and unwavering in the devastating company of their own mortality.

Minutes passed before Garrus turned towards the others, cleared his throat to get their attention.

One by one, a line of red eyes met his own.

His mandibles drooped.

He swallowed.

"I don't have much to say," he said, each word slowed as he deliberated over them, as he channelled his voice into something that belied the anguish coursing through the parts of him that had been empty just an hour earlier. "Shepard didn't look at any of us and see rank or duty; she saw us each for who we were. And now she's made it too easy for us to see her as a hero, but I'm not going do that – I'm going to keep her memory alive as the woman she was and not the soldier who brought down the Reapers.

"I don't think it's possible to put into words all that she meant to me, and it isn't really my place to assume her exact importance to you guys. Shepard made sure that she was … something special to us all. And that – not her victories – is what made her such a great leader.

"The galaxy is never going to know her the way that we do – well, I guess it's the way we did now. And call me a cynic, but I don't really trust it to do right by her. So I want to ask you to do one last thing in her name.

"I know she was honoured to serve with each person here. Once we're off this godforsaken tropical paradise and back to action, it's on us to make good and damned sure that we represent her well. Whoever she was to you, forget everything else you hear and remember her that way. She lives on in us. It's what she would have wanted. And it's the least she deserves.

"She didn't die in vain, and I've got all of you to thank for that. Whatever you do, continue to make her as proud of you as I know you are to have served with her."

He turned back away from everyone, listening as they swallowed their tears, as they caught their breath, as they shared their own words, and finally as they left him alone with the memorial. Some people placed a hand on his shoulder before they were gone, but he couldn't say who. There was no turning around – no showing them the cracks that were forming in his armour, nor the scuffs in his veneer of togetherness. So he nodded his gratitude and they left.

Now alone, he moved to touch her nameplate, gently, with the very tips of his fingers.

"I love you," he said.

The answering silence almost destroyed him.


	6. Chapter 6

She was already gone.

Hackett didn't need to turn around to see that her escort had returned alone. Inside the silence that followed the swoosh of the door and the final thumps of a single set of footsteps on marble was a palpable amount of failure.

"Where is she?" Hackett asked, steadying the agitation in his voice so as not to place his frustration on undeserving shoulders.

"I don't know, sir."

"What do you know?"

"That she left something behind for you, sir."

That was enough to get Hackett to look away from the window, his entire body moving at the slow speed of manufactured certainty. As though he had no concerns over where Shepard was, what she had done, how he would face the Normandy with the news if it turned out that she couldn't be found.

Still by the door, the soldier was standing in full salute.

"At ease," Hackett said.

He dropped his arm but loosened nothing else. Tension had settled so deeply within him that it had stiffened his jaw into something sharp, had carved his body into stone. He had a lot to learn about presenting a pretense of solidity, Hackett thought. Or, he did if he intended to pursue a lengthy military career.

"Sir, yes, sir."

"What have you got for me, soldier?"

Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a small data pad. Military issue. A smart move on Shepard's part. Not only would it be encrypted to top brass, it stored her retinal scan, fingerprints, and her DNA, as well as a snapshot taken each time she accessed the files it stored. Whatever she'd uploaded to it, there would be no room to question its authenticity.

"This, sir."

Hackett accepted it as soon as it was offered and turned halfway away to load the file.

It took a while for the pad to read his eyes, his fingers, his blood. When it finally had, Hackett almost lost sense of them all; couldn't believe his eyes, couldn't still his fingers, couldn't slow the beat of his heart as it quickened in his chest.

The file was titled thus:

_The Last Will and Testament of Jane Shepard_.

There was no need for him to page through its contents. Whatever she'd decided to do with her wealth and her possessions meant nothing compared to the implication of her intent to part with it all.

One way or the other, she was done.

Turning once again to face the soldier, he said, "You're Admiral Marshall's son, correct?"

"Yes sir!"

"She's a great woman."

"One of the best, sir."

"Do you take after her?"

"I try, sir. She sets a high example."

"That she does. Is this your first tour of duty?"

"Yes sir, enlisted as soon as those synthetic bastards invaded earth."

Done with his line of questioning, Hackett fell silent. Scrutinized everything he could about the man before him; his posture, his build, his stillness, his ability to maintain eye contact.

In that moment, Marshall was two things to him.

First and foremost, he was an unknown variable – an unproven man who had a well-respected name but maybe not the mettle to back it up as someone separate from the history of his blood.

He was also in a unique position. Though Hackett had wanted to assign one of his own left-hand men to Shepard, she was insistent on a rookie. At the time, he took no issue that, figuring the potential for loose lips and leaked statuses was mostly irrelevant the closer they came to confirming Shepard's survival. Besides which, the Alliance was only staying quiet for her, and he knew that she understood the risks in her request. There was no solid reason to refuse her.

Now, as a result of that, the rookie had become one of a handful of people who knew that she had survived and could surmise that she had fled. Not necessarily in the face of duty, but that was how it would be taken.

Which meant that Hackett had no choice but to trust him. To remove him from the centre of operations, where he had originally been stationed, and place in his young hands the responsibility of serving a hero beyond keeping her supplied, offering her a little bit of company, making sure nobody knew that a ghost was living within the walls of Anderson's old apartment.

"I have a mission for you soldier," he said. "It will require the utmost care and confidentiality – do you believe you are up to the task?"

"Absolutely, sir, I'd be honoured."

"Assure me of your silence."

"Yes sir, I won't share anything about this mission with anybody. Not even m– Admiral Marshall, sir."

Hackett raised the datapad, tapped it with the back of his fingers. "This is Shepard's will."

"Her will, sir?"

"In light of receiving this, I am relieving you of your duty with the Fifth Fleet and assigning you the task of finding her."

"But sir, with all due respect, isn't that what C-Sec is for?"

"I highly doubt there's anything for C-Sec to find."

"Sir?"

"I believe she's alive."

Marshall's jaw fell slack; his eyes widened. Watching him, Hackett tried to remember how it felt to wear his heart – and not his stripes – on his sleeves.

"That would mean she faked her death, sir."

"It would."

"Are you sure, sir?"

He wasn't, not entirely, but he looked Marshall straight in the eye and said, "Yes."

"How will I find her?"

"There's only so far she can travel with the mass relays down and so few ships docked on the Citadel. I'll have port authority grant you full access to their data – departures, destinations, passenger lists. Narrow the facts down and I have no doubt that you'll figure out her location."

"Understood, sir. What are my orders when I find her?"

"Make sure she's safe, and under no circumstances allow anyone else to discover her identity."

"Should I reveal myself to her, sir?"

"You're going to have to make that call yourself, soldier."

"Yes sir. If I may ask, sir, does she know...?"

"Know about what?"

"That you found the Normandy, sir."

Hackett's mouth twisted, his eyes narrowed; entirely involuntary but slight enough, he hoped, to evade Marshall's notice. "She does," he said. "I delivered the news to her personally."

Marshall raised his arm, offered another salute which Hackett returned. "I won't let you down, sir," he said.

Then Hackett said: "dismissed."

Both men turned; one towards the door, the other towards the large window that looked out over the Presidium. The clear, blue waters below were still even as the galaxy around them trembled. Seeing serenity reflected within them, Hackett felt, for the briefest of moments, that he could relate to what Shepard had done.

People like them, they just didn't know how to coexist with peace.


	7. Chapter 7

On Omega, you're only safe in the company of the dead.

To off-worlders, the message was dire. In their minds they heard _only in death are you safe_, and they shuddered at the thought, sharing condemnations of how terrible the place must be if the collective found salvation only within the finality of being reduced to dust and ash and bloody streaks on the pavement.

Anyone who found livelihood on the asteroid, however, knew that the reality of matter was infinitely kinder than its surrounding assumptions. It was one of the only codes of honour Omega knew.

Deep within the underbelly was a field where real plants flourished beneath artificial lights. It wasn't very large. There was no space within its bounds for trees to stretch their roots, for small children to run, for kings of death and pawns alike to relax into the coolness of the ground. Neither was it verdant, nor maintained all that well. But it was rare enough to be special, which made it one of the few peaceful spots spared from the desperation, and the decay, and the darkness that hung so thick over Omega that it haunted the air like smoke.

In the centre of that field stood several walls lined up in neat order, all constructed from the broken down bits-and-pieces of Omega. Each section was short enough for an average-sized human to see over, and long enough for it to take a few minutes to travel on foot from one end to another.

On those walls were sprawled the names of the dead. No epitaphs, no dates of birth, no dates of death. Just name after name after name; just a long line of ghosts only known for having breath no longer.

There, people were safe to grieve. Guns were lain down, rivalries and hits ignored in favour of treating the dead with reverence and remembrance so that one day, when they too succumbed to Omega, they could expect the same respect from the living.

It was there that Garrus found Shepard.

The first thing he noticed was that her hair was longer now. She'd pulled up in a tight bun. A few loose tendrils curled out beside her ears and at the nape of her neck, and Garrus wondered if she'd ever again let him twirl them around his fingers like he used to when she tried to fall asleep to the softness of his touch. The clothes she wore were loose and light, moving at the slightest breeze, showing little bits of her shoulder, her hands, her ankles, only to hide them from his sight again.

Because she was turned away from him, he couldn't see her face but he knew it was her; he had been a scholar of her once, an eager student who'd studied everything that made Shepard _Shepard_, committed it to memory, called to mind whenever he needed to feel loved or motivated or lucky. So he knew from the way she held herself with a relaxed sort of pride, from the gentleness of her small hand as it wrote a new name into the old wall, from the tilt of her head, from the arch of her back, that she couldn't be anyone else.

The spot on the wall she'd chosen was near to the place where he'd once etched his own set of names. Erash. Monteague. Mierin. Grundan. Krul. Melanis. Ripper. Sensat. Vortash. Butler. Weaver. He'd worked each one into the stone until his hands were raw and his blood had coloured the little chips that fell to his feet, and he left wondering if anybody would spare them a second thought after he was gone.

Shepard bowed her head and Garrus watched her shoulders to see if they would shake, to see if she would cry, to see if there was a space for his hand on that soft curve leading to her neck, but she didn't stay like that for long. Just for a breath or two. Then she moved further down the wall.

Garrus felt his heart clench.

Stopping a few feet away from where she'd left her memories, she looked over the place where he'd once offered his own and reached out to place her fingers on the names she found there. First Melanis, then Vortash, then Mierin, then the other members of Garrus' crew, one by one, each given the same amount of her time, the same honour of her regard.

It was a sign, he thought. That she was in some ways still his; that there remained a place for him in her life.

He took a step forward.

Dead leaves cracked beneath the weight of his boot.

Shepard whipped herself around, black fabric rising and falling like soft waves.

"Garrus?" she said.

It wasn't like the first time they met again on Omega, or like their reunion on Menae. There was no relief in her eyes, no joy, no delight at seeing him alive and well, safely within her reach. Keeping her arms tight at her side and her body twisted just enough away from him to facilitate an easy escape, she looked at him instead like he'd shot her straight through with the largest calibre bullet he had.

Something tugged on his mind, told him to turn away, reminded him that she was there because she didn't want to be found. But he'd come so far and the sound of his name rolling off her tongue wasn't nearly enough to survive on now that he was seeing her again, beautiful and strong and close enough that if he just reached out then maybe …

He extended his arms, slowly. Held his hands out palm up – a peace offering, of sorts. An act of submission, a way to say _it's okay_ without allowing his voice to reveal to her how much it hurt to see her again, in ways both good and bad.

She stepped away. Once, twice. Then she took a third, larger step. Looked behind her. Looked back. Fixed Garrus with eyes that he couldn't read because he'd never seen them so glazed over before, so wide, so erratic in the way they moved over him, and behind him, back and forth, back and forth, again and again and again.

"Shepard, wait," he said.

But she didn't wait. Trusting Garrus not to follow her, she turned. She left.

She disappeared.

For a while, Garrus stood there, blank, watching the space into which she had vanished, not wanting to leave because what if – what if she had a change of heart and came back, what if she did that and he wasn't there?

Then evening came, and Shepard had not.

He could feel a chill in his bones that he knew wasn't entirely attributable to the air, which had picked up speed around him and blew little pieces of plants and small shards of stone against his feet. As if it was pushing him forward, telling him to leave.

There was one thing he wanted to do first.

Moving back to the wall, he took a moment to remember each of his men the way Shepard had, placing his fingers on their names, thinking about their smiles, their dreams, their determination to bring goodness to the darkness of Omega. Then he moved onto the name she had written on the stone in thick, black ink.

_Marshall_.

"Keep an eye out for her, kid," he said.

Without looking back, even one last time, he left for Omega's upper level.

The underbelly wasn't his place anymore. It was hers, and she wanted it for herself.


	8. Chapter 8

Five times an enforcer had stood by Garrus' booth and said, "You have to order something else." Once they added, "I'm serious," and and another time, "don't think we won't drag your sorry ass out of here if you don't start putting down more credits."

Twice, the bartender had come over himself. His approach was less _drink more or I will hurt you_, more _do it so you can fuck yourself up_, which to be fair was why Garrus had dragged himself to Afterlife that morning.

But he hadn't even touched his first, not even to bring it to his lips and change his mind before his tongue hit the lip of the glass. Breathing was a precursor to drowning and his mind had long since suffocated in the vacuum of Shepard's absence. Alcohol wouldn't do anything except make him feel like shit, match his body with his mind.

As much as he doubted that he could feel worse, he wasn't quite up to tempting fate.

So he just sat there, begrudging the way that time had stretched the seconds well beyond their length, ignoring everyone until Aria finally told them to ignore him.

When a new shadow cast another vaguely person-like shape in front of him, he first thought: _go away_.

Instead of leaving, it slid across the table, angling itself against the column separating the booth from the bar floor. It crossed its arms. It did not go away.

Something tightened in Garrus' throat; something burned the back of his eyes. But he didn't look up; wouldn't, couldn't. In case he was wrong, in case he wasn't ready, in case he was wanted more than he wanted her.

She gave in quicker than he'd expected. Said, simply: "Is this seat taken?" and sat down before he could say yes.

Or no.

But both of them knew he didn't have it in him to refuse.

"It's been open for seven years," he said in a voice that was soft and tired and hurt, yet so full of relief that he didn't care how much of himself he had just given away.

"You're still buying, right?"

"I'm still buying … what?"

"My drink. Don't think I've forgotten the promise you made me in London. Or are you gonna try to tell me it doesn't count because this is the wrong Afterlife?"

Garrus laughed – spirits it felt good to laugh – and said: "How long were you practising that line?"

Those were the wrong words though. They killed the smile teasing at her lips, wilted the surety in her shoulders. "A lady never reveals her secrets," she said. Half-hearted. Quieted.

The light in her eyes flickered and he watched it, hoping that it didn't fade.

It didn't.

She wouldn't be Shepard if her fire could be reduced to embers. How he'd forgotten that, he didn't know.

In the glow of that lingering light, Garrus slipped into her silence, was silent himself in turn. The feeling was warm and familiar, and it wrapped around them like a bandage.

He took her in with his eyes, as much as he could. Attempted to relearn the lines of her bones, the curves of her flesh. Her scars were larger than his, and deeper in places, but he thought she wore them better; there was symmetry in the way they crossed her nose and knotted texture into her cheeks. For the first time he thought he understood why she'd been so infatuated with his own, why her fingers always seemed to graze the parts of his flesh that could barely feel her touch.

Her elbows were on the table, her hands pressed together, steepled fingertip to fingertip. Messy polish in blues and purples and pinks coloured her nails and the skin around them. The work of children, of small hands unsteady with happiness.

"What happened, Shepard?"

There was a moment he thought she'd leave again; her hands dropped to the table, palm down, and she used the force of her arms to lift herself up. But then she tilted her body to the side, brought a knee up to her chest, and wrapped her hands over her shin. She shrugged, though it came across of more of an upward lurch. Like she hadn't really meant it and some synapse had just fired a reflex of casualness in her, a knee-jerk reaction to being at a bar with Garrus across from her and nothing but a drink between them.

"How the hell do you expect me to answer that, Garrus? At least give me somewhere to start."

_Like I have any idea where_, he thought. Then he sighed and he remembered why he was there, so he said: "Are you all right?"

Which made her look at him with softened eyes, at once relieved, at once saddened, at once guilty. Slightly flustered by being set on the more emotional course of explanation, it took her a little while to patchwork her thoughts together into something cohesive.

What she came up with was this: "I think I've become a schoolmarm."

"A _what_?"

"A teacher. Ish. There's a lot of kids down there and somebody's gotta teach them their ABCs and 123s."

"And how to shoot a gun?"

"Yeah. And how to shoot a gun."

"I heard about Marshall."

Shepard nodded, kept nodding for a few moments. A pained smile thinned her lips which made the scars across her cheek seem to dimple. "From Hackett?"

Garrus held up his hands, playing at being playful. "I can't reveal my sources," he said. Then he added: "It wasn't a hit, was it?"

"No," she said, softly, the word so much like air that Garrus only caught it because of how intently he was watching her, like she was liable to disappear again if he looked away even if just for a moment. "Bored vorcha."

"Shit. Sorry."

Shepard turned away. Placed her chin on her shoulder, looked out at nothing in particular. Her fingers were tapping something erratic against the back of her hand and Garrus reached out to steady them, only to withdraw within inches of her.

_It's not your place_, he reminded himself.

But then his mind went here: _Who the hell's place is it?_

Just as he was about to commit to the touch, to trying to add a little bit of solidity to a shaky set of circumstances, she asked him, "You grew up somewhere nice, right?"

He placed his hands flat on the table, then slid them over to his full glass. Holding onto it, at least, kept them out of trouble. "That depends on what you mean by _somewhere nice_."

"Did you feel safe?"

"I did."

"Have enough food to eat?"

"Too much, if you ask Solana."

"Did you have everything you needed?"

"Yes."

"And a lot of the things you just wanted?"

"Where are you going with this?"

"I can't go back with you, Garrus."

Truthfully, he hadn't expected that she would. But neither did he anticipate how deep that _no_ would slice him. He tried to find the right words to reassure her but everything seemed to come back to a single, useless, selfish word:

_Please_.

But she spoke instead, saying: "I don't know how to live like that. Never did."

"How to live like what?"

"Peacefully."

"You get used to it after a while."

"Maybe you can, but I –," she started to say. Then her voice caught in her throat, severed whatever chain of words she'd meant to have follow that maybe. She finished it instead with, "Sorry."

"Shepard..."

"It felt like I was waiting forever for news."

"On the Normandy, you mean?"

"Yeah, on the Normandy. I stuck around long enough to hear they'd picked up on her signal and..."

"And what, Shepard?"

She turned back around, fixed him with a look that would have suggested she didn't expect to see him there, had he not known any better. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this."

"You know I don't mind, Shepard."

"I mind."

"Oh."

"I can't go back," she said again, and the way she bore her eyes into his own, pleadingly, apologetically, yet with so much strength he feel it brew inside of himself, told him it wasn't personal, but there was no solace in that. PTSD hit humans particularly hard, he knew. Drove them places they didn't want to go, drove people away from them, drove them mad.

It hurt him to say nothing.

To do nothing.

But only in silence did he avoid the risk of hurting her, which mattered so much more.

She turned back into the booth but only so she could push herself up without having to rely on her bad leg. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming all this way to see me Garrus, but I should go."

_Not yet_, he thought. _Not yet. Not yet. Not yet._

He stood up after her.

_Be confident._

"Look, at least let me walk you back."

"Garrus..."

_Don't lose her without a fight._

"And if I happen to like the place then you might be able to convince me to stay around."

"It's been seven years."

"So what?"

"I'm sorry, Garrus," she said. Then she turned around, took a step, started to move away from him, further and further.

What could he say? What could he do? When would his efforts become intrusive, unwelcome? Maybe they'd already reached that point.

But what if they hadn't.

It had been so hard to let her go the first time; to watch her leave him standing among the dead while the sound of his name on her tongue still echoed throughout him. Now it felt like torture; now it felt like he was losing himself, like the piece of him that had once been sewn so neatly into Shepard's existence was unravelling while the last binds keeping it whole frayed.

With the quickness of fear, he weaved out of the booth, following after her. As soon as he was within reach of her, he placed his hands on her shoulders – first the left, then the right – and he said: "Shepard, please. I can't lose you again."

All around them, the Afterlife pulsed with music and voices, with the quiet sounds of drinks being mixed, with the the noisiness of brawls breaking out over matters of no consequence to them because they were happening outside of the pocket of air in which they existed together.

In his hands, her shoulders hitched. He could feel her swallow. Though he wanted to pull her back towards, him, to wrap his arms around her properly, to hold onto her so tight that it hurt, he didn't move.

Eventually, she softened beneath his hands. Eased her breath. Almost seemed to relax, then she slid unexpectedly from his grip. Before he could think to reach out after her again, she'd turned until they were face-to-face, placed the palms of her hands on the front of his shoulders.

She hesitated.

Garrus didn't.

In an instant he had curled over her enough to press his forehead softly against hers. When she didn't pull away, he brought his hands to the small of her back, rest them there with the barest of touches.

"I don't suppose you need reminding of how stubborn you are," she said.

He didn't answer.

Shepard pulled away from to reach up and place her hands at the squares of his jaw. With a gentleness he'd been craving for years, she shifted his face to meet her own and gave him a warm smile. It wasn't the one he had known, but neither was this Shepard the same woman as the one who had loved him, the one who he had loved in return.

When she ran a finger gently beneath the curve of his eye, he knew that he could love her all the same.

If she would let him.

Though he didn't know how long his welcome would last – whether she would recoil away from him like a stress-taught string within a month, or spend the rest of her days with him knowing truly how it meant to feel content – he was, at the very least, sure he had made the right decision in coming to Omega.


End file.
